Marketers salivate over the amount of data Google holds, and today Google gives us another window into their database of intentions.  Similar to Google Trends, their newest service, Google Insights, allows you to get a glimpse of what terms people are searching for. Insights, however, offers additional tools to make those results more useful.  Now you can filter by geography, time frame, and category/topic.

The potential uses for this are limitless.  Need to track your online campaign better?  Look at results by geography or by how the search pattern changes before and after your campaign.  Need to know what terms are most popular in your targeted geography so you can bid on the best terms on AdWords?  You could identify terms by market to better target separate campaigns based on differences in local lingo.  Or do you need to know when you should start advertising your seasonal products?  You can see what time of year people have begun to search for those products in the past.

And don’t forget about offline advertising and marketing.  Need to find new markets? You could estimate demand based on their search terms.  Need to spot trends as they arise?  Google Trends could help with that, but now you can look at it over time and see the variations by locale.  How about seeing how you stack up against your competitors?

Enough with random ideas.  I’ve already done some playing with brands:  Crocs has a great rise (and seasonal falls).  Look for Al Gore (yes he is a brand) and you can see the rise from his movie, Oscar, and Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, Google Insights shouldn’t be used alone in most situations – and you can’t always directly correlate search rankings with potential causes such as an ad campaign- but it provides yet one more new tool to help us measure what’s going on out in the world.

Picture of the googlebot from the artists at MMOart.com.